Digital Matters - Issue 36

As a result, a fully functional wireless Web is years away for U.S. consumers. That wait, in turn, discourages application-service providers from developing products of the kind that will soon be standard features of wireless communications in Europe and in Asia. The hope is that an Oracle or a Microsoft or a Sun Microsystems will come up with a kind of magical solution -- a "black box" that will allow content providers to write one set of code that can then be translated (by the black box) to work with all of the various competing wireless platforms in the United States. But let's be honest: Magic solutions rarely, if ever, work.

A likelier outcome is that the wireless-technology gap will widen. And the consequences of a widening wireless gap are more than just technological. Larger issues include the competition for talent, the race for new technologies, and the future itself.

Imagine for a moment that you work for Zagat.com. Your job is to help your company own the "wireless space" for travel-and-entertainment guides. Zagat.com is a natural partner for cell-phone companies everywhere. Where do you go first?

In the case of the restaurant-guide company, Japan's largest Internet-service provider, NTT DoCoMo, approached Zagat.com to cut a deal. Zagat provided its content and its new wireless-Web software to NTT, knowing that it only had to write one set of code for the cell-phone platform for NTT. In the United States, where Zagat.com provides content for PDAs and not for cell-phones, the company is attempting to write roughly 19 different sets of code to get the same content and software onto everybody's PalmPilot.

Zagat.com's next move will be into Europe for the same reason that it moved into Japan: It will only have to write one set of code for its wireless-Web service to work properly on everyone's cell-phone. It could take years before third-generation wireless technology enables similarly easy access to the wireless market in the United States. As a kicker, Zagat guides (in book form) were part of its NTT deal. Sales of Zagat guides are already way up in Japan. If the trend of wireless guides begetting increased book sales replicates itself in Europe, which market do you think will get more of Zagat.com's attention? It won't be the U.S. market.

Now, combine Zagat.com's experiences with those of thousands of other service companies, and think about the implications. Say you're interested in advertising and in marketing. You know that the echo-boom generation makes the Web the future of marketing. You also know that the echo boomers' next step is to adopt wireless technology. You want to be on marketing's cutting edge.

What do you do? Go to Scandinavia -- because that's where the future of marketing communications is happening right now. Think about that guy in the mall in Finland. Because of GPS, you know exactly where he is. Because he's given you permission, you know more or less what he's interested in buying, both for himself and for his girlfriend. As he walks through a mall, you can alert him, via wireless Web, to two or three special deals that are available at stores that he happens to be walking past -- at that moment. If he buys something at one of those stores, your company gets a small percentage of the transaction.

You are marketing in real time. You are no longer an assistant account executive on the Bell Atlantic account. And everything that you learn about real-time marketing will make you smarter about the future of marketing, more knowledgeable about the effectiveness of new media, and more valuable to advertising and marketing agencies around the world. Your colleagues who went to work at American agencies won't have anything like your experience when wireless technology becomes fully functional everywhere -- in, say, five years. You'll be ahead of them by leaps and bounds.

Now, apply that experience to any number of business categories. Banks and financial-service companies that understand the dynamics of wireless-Web financial trading and wireless-Web banking will be much more attractive to consumers than banks and financial-service companies that don't understand those dynamics. Companies of all kinds that compete in this wireless-Web environment will be much smarter, much faster, and much more competitive than companies that avoid the wireless-Web revolution.

Most important, those companies will display discipline and accountability in an entirely new way. Everyone who has wireless-Web access on a PDA or a cell-phone is suddenly a restaurant critic, a theater critic, a travel writer, a product assessor -- someone who has the option of voting on your business every hour of every day. And the results of all of those customers voting on your business in real time will be available to everyone else in real time via the Web.